DjangoCon Europe 2017

Everyone knows the story: armed with nothing more than a laptop and a dream, a couple of plucky geeks decide to take on the world: disrupting, innovating, and subverting their way to success. In just a few short months, they take a ramshackle collection of software and turn it into a money-printing factory that enables them to drive off into the sunset in gold-plated Lamborghinis.

But it isn't always like that. In fact, it usually isn't. Venture Capitalists (VC's) make their investments betting that 15 out of 20 businesses they invest in will outright fail, 4 will maybe get a payoff, and 1 will be a massive success. We always hear about the 1 - the Facebooks, the Instagrams, the WhatsApps. But we very rarely hear about the 15 that don't succeed. And that's only counting the VC-funded companies - there are many other companies that never make it past hobby stage, or live a short, privately funded life on the back of consulting income before being quietly shut down.

This is a case study of one such a failure - TradesCloud. What went right? What went wrong? And what you can learn from TradesCloud's mistakes if you're contemplating starting a business of your own?